History’s fool

The so-called independence of any our leaders is vastly overrated. A friend of mine who was a big editor at a major newspaper once told me of the incredible pressure they came under on news decisions from high officials, even the White House. You wouldn’t want my job, he said to me. George Orwell was one of the most independent thinkers in modern literature. His essay Killing an Elephant is all about how he went against his considered judgment, and murdered an elephant in Burma, because he was a colonial official facing great pressure from his constituency.

Obama is murdering the elephant too. Last night’s speech was pitched partly toward me– I’m the crowd that thinks Afghanistan is Vietnam–and utterly failed to persuade me. As Chris Matthews said, there was no stirring rationale offered, no clear purpose defined. We’re going to put in 30,000 troops so that we can pull them out. We’re going to fight in Afghanistan to save Pakistan. Ahmed Rashid made a better Pakistani case for an American surge in the New York Review of Books a few weeks back, but he said it was a minimum three-year-engagement. No American will sign up for three years, and I don’t believe any American occupation can work. On CNN last night, Fareed Zakaria said that Obama is merely brokering different pressures: MacChrystal/Realism/Neoconservatism, with an eloquent compromise.

I don’t blame Obama. Again, the so-called independent thinking of any of our leaders is vastly overrated. In War and Peace, Tolstoy says that Napoleon made a huge tragic mistake, invading Russia in 1812, against his own better judgment. But Napoleon had less freedom to act than an individual soldier. Tolstoy’s view of history was that it was an organic force that no individual could contravene, and certainly not an individual in Napoleon’s position. Bloggers have tons more freedom than leaders. The Obama who was against the Iraq war was in the Illinois legislature. Had he been a Senator, he may have voted for the war. An editor friend has always said that to me, defending Hillary’s vote, and I guess he’s right; I heard lately that at the New Yorker magazine before Iraq, all but one of the writers who dealt with Iraq was for the disaster. John Kerry has completely abandoned his youthful lessons, forged in blood, in supporting Iraq and now the Afghanistan morass. Because of his position.

I don’t think that Gore/Lieberman would have been any better. Lieberman stood for the same things that Cheney stood for: fortress Israel neoconservatism. Fortress Israel neoconservatism is a force in our politics and economic and media life that no individual can overturn in an election. Obama will be struggling with it all his presidency. You’ll notice that there was very little hearts-and-minds Cairo talk in his speech of last night. That kind of talk is over. Dennis Ross is in Obama’s administration because he represents the Israel lobby in American political life. And so does Rahm Emanuel in his way. Jewish conservatism is an organic part of the American establishment.

I wonder if Obama, being an intellectual, doesn’t secretly hate his job. He actually seems to like ideas. There were few ideas in last night’s speech, except for the good idea of stanching Islamic radicalism. But by force? That’s neoconservatism. He’s to the right of Andrea Mitchell and Tom Friedman. I wonder if all those death threats make Obama personally more conservative. It would affect me.

What can we do about it? We have a lot of freedom on the blogosphere and we’re changing the political culture. Bit by bit. The left is driving the discussion. Antiwar voices are aired, as they weren’t 7 years ago. Not fast enough for all the brave men and women who are going to be shipped off to Afghanistan. Still we’re doing it. The Jewish identity stuff I’m engaging is a revolution in Jewish life, happening slowly. So is the invasion of the Realists into the power structure. But history’s bigger than any of us. Last night it made Obama look helpless.